What's the most challenging subject you ever shoot?

[Maira Fravel]

Or it can be something that really touched you. A lot of you may have done a lot of challenging shoots. Sound silly but was there something challenging in a way that it was too difficult physically, then eventually emotionally. Perhaps shooting poverty or remote places. For sure it would touch you deeply. I hope I make sense.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Hardest subject physically... a half-millimeter spider with 5x macro, trying to keep it looking into the lens.

Hardest psychologically... a terminally ill child with cancer on her experience of a happy childhood.

 

[Maira Fravel]

Half-millimeter spider, woah! That's something.

Oh, yeah. No doubt the saddest. I mean, when I see pictures like this. I can see it in their eyes that there's no hatred whatsoever, but I can see the hope and the desire to still want to live... but won't.

 

[Dominik Muench]

I was working on a documentary about natural disasters and was sent to Nepal 4 days after the devastating earthquake that left 8.000 people dead within minutes in 2015.
so many emotional moments its hard to pick one in particular, but twice the same thing happened in different locations that showed me how people who lost everything can still be positive and even try and help others.

We were shooting an interview with a man who lost his house and all his belongings, the shot was of the man standing on the rubble of his house telling his story to the camera. It was a brutally hot day and we were all soaked in sweat. after the interview the man lead us to a plastic tarp he had strung up on a tree nearby which he used as his current dwellings and offered us tea, water and food. This guys just lost his entire livelihood and property and yet he still wanted to help out a filmcrew and make sure we were fed and not dehydrated.....the guy was literally offering us the last few bottles of water he had sitting in his tent.

A few days later I took a helicopter 4200m up into the mountains to the village that was right in the epicenter of the quake....there wasn't a single house left standing. I camped with the refugees of that village and in the evening the same thing happened again....a family who lost everything invited me into their tent wanting to share what little emergency rations the government airlifted up to them. the family had 4 small kids and a few elderly people and yet they still wanted to share their food with us foreigners.

The first photo is of the man offering us tea and water, the others I took on my phone in the village and refugee tent at night with the family that invited me into their tent.
Most humbling moment of my life !!

While far from photographically perfect this is one of my favorite shots from this entire "experience", two kids sitting outside the refugee camp overlooking the Himalaya with Mt Everest in the background.

 

[Maira Fravel]

Wow. I'm speechless with all of these. Thank you for sharing. I really love seeing the world from other people's eyes. And it's truly heartbreaking that these people have to endure this. I could only imagine how devastating it was, losing everything and still be kind. Though what they experienced could really be traumatic. I wonder how they will cope. Are traumas like this treated in other countries, too? Will they be seen by therapists to address whatever psychological effect this may have on them? It will be of big help, right?